The 2025 Physics Laureates
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”
The laureates used a series of experiments to demonstrate that the bizarre properties of the quantum world can be made concrete in a system big enough to be held in the hand. Their superconducting electrical system could tunnel from one state to another, as if it were passing straight through a wall. They also showed that the system absorbed and emitted energy in doses of specific sizes, just as predicted by quantum mechanics.
The QDM Lab has collaborated with both John Clarke and John Martinis in publications over several years.
Illustration by Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach